


this is not beautiful

by superstarrgirl



Category: One Direction (Band)
Genre: So So So Sorry, also ends kinda quickly? idk man i got bored, also harry might kinda seem like a dickhead in the end, its a kinda sad story I'm truly truly sorry, sorry - Freeform
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-03-19
Updated: 2014-03-19
Packaged: 2018-01-16 06:29:33
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,165
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1335478
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/superstarrgirl/pseuds/superstarrgirl
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>The articles call Louis out and ask him why he’s still alive. Louis wonders the same thing. </p><p>Or, </p><p>This is a story of death, but it is not beautiful</p>
            </blockquote>





	this is not beautiful

**Author's Note:**

> You know, this honestly wasn't supposed to turn out like this. I was just kinda playing around and…this. Maybe one day I'll actually write something, you know, happy and enjoyable. Until that day, however, enjoy!

The phone’s ringing, interrupting the silence of the room. The figure on the bed, cocooned in white cotton sheets, wakes with a surprised gurgle, thrashing and winding himself further into the tangle of the sheets. A hand scrambles out from underneath the pillow, skittering toward the phone vibrating on the wooden bedside table. 

“Hello?” The boy asks when he finally gets the phone to his ear. A hurried response can be heard, but the boy does not recognize the voice or the words they’re saying. “What?” He asks slowly, blinking his eyes open against the sunlight filtering through the open window. On the other end, the answer is repeated, and the boy sits bolt upright as though there’s a rod in his back. 

“I’m on my way.” He breathes, before he disconnects. 

\-- 

The hospital is quiet at two in the morning. 

Louis is in a hard, plastic hospital chair, his head in his hands and fingers tangled in his hair. He’s been here for three days, can’t even find the energy to move anymore. He hates the hospital, but fears going home, fears what he might miss if he were to leave. The nurses haven’t kicked him out yet.

He finally sits up, rolling his shoulders back and slumping further into the chair defeated. His eyes sting every time he blinks from the tears, and his throat is hoarse from screaming at the nurses and doctors to let him in. Everybody else has been allowed in, why hasn’t he? His hands are curled into fists, but there’s no anger in the clench of his bones, the way his fingers press into the skin of his palm. He doesn’t think he has any anger left to give. 

With every swing of the door, every whisper of hospital shoes, Louis glances up and prays that it will be for him, someone telling him that everything is fine and beautiful and nothing’s wrong. With every swing of the door and every person who comes through that gives him a sympathetic look, he wants to throw his chair against the wall. He tips his head back against the wall behind him and waits. 

\-- 

The nurse that is talking has kind blue eyes and blonde hair held in a low ponytail at the nape of her neck. The scrubs fit loosely on her body, and her white sneakers seem to almost blend in with the floor tiles. She’s speaking, but Louis isn’t listening. 

He’s pretty sure he stopped listening after the first sentence. 

\--

Niall and Liam are in a coma. Harry’s got blood filling up in his lungs, slowly suffocating him. Zayn’s got blunt force head trauma and brain damage from going through the windshield and into a telegraph pole. 

Louis can’t breathe. 

\--

They’ve given Harry a 10% chance of living. Surgery will not help, there’s too much blood in his lungs. Surgery will only prolong the inevitable. Louis locks himself in a supply closet and sobs.

\-- 

They let him into see Harry first, because he’s the only one that can actually form coherent sentences, when he’s not asleep. Which is 23.9 hours of the day.

Gemma is sitting at Harry’s bedside, scribbling something into a journal and wiping her eyes every few seconds. Anne is sitting in a plastic chair, simply watching. When Louis enters, Anne turns and leaps up, folding Louis into her arms, and even though Louis knows it’s supposed to make him feel better, all it makes him feel is alone. 

Harry’s asleep on the bed, limbs too big for the small mattress he’s been placed upon. Tubes feed into him – breathing tubes, feeding tubes, tubes to help him even exist. Louis slowly extracts himself from Anne and embraces Gemma, simply because it’s what’s expected of him, but he’s focusing on Harry and Harry alone. 

“He’s been asking for you.” Anne sniffles when Louis finally makes it to Harry, sitting in the chair Gemma vacated. “Seems to be the only thing he does whenever he wakes up. Well,” she seems to hesitate, “you and the other boys.” 

Louis wants to ask if Anne has told Harry that ‘the other boys’ probably won’t wake up. Louis wants to ask if Harry knows he’s going to suffocate to death. Louis wants to ask why nobody is telling him why he wasn’t in the car, in Zayn’s place, Liam’s, Niall’s, Harry’s. 

“He’s so small.” Louis says instead of responding. There’s a choked sound behind him, a muttered apology, and then heavy footfalls. 

Anne sighs. “I’ll go get Gemma, leave you two with some alone time.” Louis doesn’t turn, doesn’t acknowledge, just simply grips Harry’s hand tighter and tries to remind himself to breathe. 

He just sits for half an hour, drawing on Harry’s wrist with a permanent marker he found on Gemma’s journal. He’s a shit drawer, really, but he needs to occupy his hands. He draws a love heart, a notebook, a music note, a bow and arrow, a teacup, a four-leafed clover, a turtle, a Zap! symbol. He draws and wonders if Harry’s ever going to get the chance to see his creations. 

He leaves before he makes a fool of himself. 

\--

The doctors tell him that Zayn is in an induced coma, a type where you can only be pulled from it naturally. There’s a 5% chance he’ll wake up himself, but even if he does, he’ll live in a vegetative state for the rest of his life. Louis knows which option Zayn would prefer. 

\--

There’s a tube cutting into Zayn’s chest, taped to his skin, and Louis makes it three steps in before he’s got an armful of blonde hair and sweet perfume and, oh god, Perrie, he forgot about Perrie. 

“They wanna take him off life-support, Lou, and I couldn’t let them do it without you saying goodbye. I couldn’t.” She sobs into Louis’ shoulder. Louis almost forgets how to breathe. 

He wraps his arms around Perrie and holds her close, kisses her temple, tells her he’s here, he’s ready to say goodbye, he doesn’t want Zayn to hurt anymore. 

He doesn’t say that he’s not ready, it’s the biggest lie he’s ever told, he can’t let go. 

\--

Niall and Liam are in the same state – comas from hitting the front of the seats so hard their necks almost snapped clean in two. They’re in the same room, only because when the ambulance was carting them to the hospital, Liam kept screaming, “NIALL! NIALL!” They have a 30% chance of waking up. 

\-- 

He slips into Liam and Niall’s room at midnight and sits beside Niall’s bed, resting his chin on his hand. He simply sits, stares, wonders what the hell he’s doing here. 

“I’m scared, Niall.” He murmurs suddenly. “I’m really, really scared. The doctors are saying that you and Liam have a 30% chance of waking up. Zayn’s got 5. Harry’s got 10. 45% between the four of you. I’m scared, fucking petrified, that you won’t wake up. What if you don’t wake up? Niall, I don’t think I could handle it if you didn’t wake up. Please, you have to wake up, please. I need you, Niall. I need you and I need Liam and Harry and Zayn. Please, please, don’t leave me, you can’t leave me, who’s gonna be my little Irish? Who’s gonna draw all my tattoos for me and who’s gonna carry me when I won’t listen to Paul and who’s gonna make me chicken soup when I’m sick?” He breathes in and wipes his eyes, though he feels it’s kind of pointless now. “Who am I gonna look after?” 

He starts to cry, burying his face in Niall’s lap and crying until he feels like it’s all he’s ever known. He falls asleep like that; tears running salty into his mouth, feeling the fake rise and fall of Niall’s chest. 

\--

He wakes to a long, drawn out beep. 

\--

Liam is the first to leave. Niall is the last. The graves all look identical. Louis learns to wait. 

\-- 

He waits at the funeral, on a bright sunny day in October when the world seems to grieve and unknown faces appear before Louis, faces he doesn’t recognize, names he doesn’t know. He waits for the four faces he’s come to love, waits for a loud ringing laugh, a calm clear gaze, a dimpled smile, a cheeky grin. He just waits. 

He waits in his apartment that wasn’t so much his but {theirs}. Food still in the fridge from the night before the accident, when the five had been staying over – yet again – and had called at least three different pizza houses throughout the night. Clothes still on the floor that smell of the soccer field, still smell of beer and pizza and Old Spice and the boys. 

He waits at Harry’s stepfather’s house where they spent months getting to know each other, learning the way they lived and laughed and loved, how Louis burned bright and Harry exploded like a supernova and Niall taught the stars to shine and Liam knew when to stop and when to start and Zayn taught them all how to draw, but not with a pencil and paper. They spent so long in that house that Louis looks for them, searches for them buried in the floorboards and comes up empty handed. 

He waits at the O2 stage, as though by standing on that place they all loved so much, it might bring four lost spirits back to him. He waits there so long that he starts to wonder if maybe he’s not searching for four lost spirits, but five. 

He waits, for months, until he finally understands that they aren’t coming back. 

\--

He feels like he’s waiting at a train station, waiting for a train that he knows won’t arrive, can’t arrive, pulled out of the stations months ago leaving him alone and behind and with no intention of ever returning. 

He gets surgery to remove all his tattoos, trying to start anew when really it’s because every time he glances down at the drawing pad his arms became he wanted to cry. He moves out of his flat and into another one on the opposite side of London, where there’s no memories crammed into the walls or the bed sheets. He gets rid of all his furniture and starts again. He burns every single photo of him and the boys, tears them up, shreds them, throws them out the window. He smashes every guitar but one, Niall’s favorite. He stops playing the piano and stops writing songs. 

He stops existing. 

\--

People don’t call Louis melodramatic to his face, but they call him melodramatic when they think he can’t hear – the protected view of a website, behind their hands at tea, when the magazines sit on the stands and yell out ‘LOUIS TOMLINSON, IN HIDING AND EMOTIONALLY DISTRAUGHT AFTER BEST FRIENDS DIE IN CAR CRASH.’ The articles are not polite or kind, they don’t offer words of apology to a broken boy. Instead they call him out on it, ask him why he hasn’t been doing press releases and helping management handle all the fallback of the crash. 

What the authors of the articles don’t seem to realize is that the five boys spent five years living in each other’s pockets. Sure, they took breaks, and although the breaks were few and far between and welcomed vigorously, none of them could wait to get back on the road, back on stage and back to each other. If one felt the pain of heartbreak or the loss of a loved one, they all felt it. When Liam and Danielle broke up, they all crawled into bed with Liam and cried together. When Zayn and Perrie got married and eight months later called a divorce, Zayn came onto the bus and started to break everything in sight. None of them questioned it, instead just helped him. When Niall wrote ‘Don’t Forget Where You Belong’ and woke them all up in the middle of the night crying and singing, they all sat there with him and sang and played and grew. When Harry was told to break up with Caroline, as it was bad publicity, he went out and got drunk, came home, took a swing at Zayn and flopped onto the couch in tears. They all piled on top of him like a shock blanket. When Louis’ mother gave birth to the twins and Louis understood he wasn’t going to get to witness them grow up, he screamed down the phone at Liam and listened to Liam yell right back. What the authors don’t seem to understand is that the five boys were not simply five boys anymore – they were five parts to the same whole. These are the things the magazine authors do not understand. 

The articles call Louis out and ask him why he’s still alive. Louis wonders the same thing. 

\--

Louis follows the other four a year after, and it’s beautiful. 

{fin}


End file.
